And the joy of Mrs Palin, what endears her to Middle America and fascinates every British woman I know, is her quality that cannot be bottled and sold: authenticity.

It shines out, even through her shopping-channel presentation, the Day-Glo patriotism of her XXL Old Glory lapel pin, her talent for talking while perpetually smiling (which, ask Gordon Brown, is a tough trick to pull off without looking deranged), the cheeseball winks, the local DJ shout-outs to kids at her brother's elementary school, the exaggerated nose wrinkles when uttering something as disgusting as “single-sex relationships” or “redistribution of wealth”. She is Nicole Kidman as the driven weather girl in To Die For, Reese Witherspoon, the ruthless high-school candidate in Election. A candy-coated ball of granite.

When she offered “a bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street”, Joe Biden had to counter quickly with the word down in Kay's Restaurant and the Home's Depot in Wilmington. When Mrs Palin played her son in Iraq, her special-needs baby, her worries about college fees, Mr Biden had to match it with a soldier boy of his own and raise her with his dead wife and daughter, then an emotionally welling remembrance of struggling to raise two injured sons alone.

Did anyone catch the Lawrence Welk sketch? Oh. My. Goodness. That was the funniest sketch I've seen on SNL in the last 5 years, easy. Both my husband and I were doubled over and laughing well into the commercial.

And, just out of curiosity: Is there really a woman with the high forehead and little hands who was on Lawrence Welk?

Does anyone honestly buy the notion of Jimmy Carter's resurrection? I sure don't. If he'd only done that "Habitat for Humanity" thing and never stuck his nose in North Korea ans so on, MAYBE. But he had to go interfering with US foreign policy with nasty dictators all this time. Jimmy Carter = EPIC FAILURE>

ooh that is such a beautiful picturebrings a tear to my beady eyes to thinkof a world of light and air and pretty flowerswhile i'm stuck under the fridge in the darkexcept when i can get to tommy's computer--tommy is the boy whose computer i use--and all that beauty makes me think of music too--you know i have the transmigrated soul of a composer--and i do wish tommy would put on the music i ask for

now, what music does that scene remind you of...me, i think of a bartok string quartettommy's usually playing the ramones

anyway, speaking of airtommy's mom got a new macbook airyou know the one you could wrap fish inif you're not carefultommy wants one toosays it will eat less space in his back packonly trouble is i watched mom snap that thing shut--whap--i asked tommy how could he make surehe wouldn't just slam that sucker shut wheni'm in the middle of a commenthe says there's lots of room between the keyssorta like an old typewriter my great great great, etc.grandfather had to hop around on,but could also hide in when the time cameno room to hide near modern technology i'm afraidmy only hope would be to flatten myself outnext to the command key, which has a flower on it

anyway, i told tommy he could just leave me the fishafter mom mistook the computer for a freezer bag

she was wondering if she could get a glass of sancerreto calm her nerves at the genius bar

The Buckeye is a beautiful thing, one of America's most emblematic and cherished butterflies.

I so wish I had a camera to have been handy to capture a Luna moth that flew into my wife's hair on a boatdock last summer. It looked like an emerald ornament by the dock light and the half moon, and I told her to freeze so she wouldn't hurt it by flailing about at it.